Conventional devices and methods for monitoring a technical facility comprising multiple systems, in particular diagnostic methods and diagnostic equipment, are often based on the observation and/or measurement of specific operational parameters of the technical facility, whereby exceeding or falling short of a reference value calls for a maintenance procedure.
Naturally, the derivation of a necessary operational procedure by observing parameters measured in isolation is, at the same time, imprecise and prone to errors.
If, on the other hand, an abundance of data that accumulates in the technical facility, in particular measurement values from various measurement positions and/or corresponding stored historical measurement values, is consulted in order to create a picture of the present or future expected operational status, then this likewise leads to no satisfactory conclusion, because the mutual dependencies of this data from data sources which are generally highly diverse are mostly unknown, and therefore, likewise, no precise evaluation or even prediction of the operational situation from it is possible.
In addition, it is to be expected that not all data that exerts an influence on the operational situation of the facility is included, which makes the problem even more complicated.